The Great Disappearing Domain Name Act
Dot Com (.com) and Other Top Level Domain Extensions
TLD stands for top level domain name, also known as a domain extension.
This is the part after the last period, like .com, .net and .org,
the original publicly available TLDs.
Com was for commercial organizations.
Net was for internet service providers.
Org was for non-profits.
There were some other special purpose TLDs like .mil for the military
and .gov for US government organizations.
Naivete Reigns
Today it is hard to believe how naive the originators
of the domain name system were.
It does not take a genius to think that if the Internet takes off,
having cars.com might be a good thing.
Anyone with any forethought can easily see there is going to be
a lot of demand for good domain names.
The government has a lot of experience dealing in this sort of thing,
such as making radio frequencies available to the public by lottery.
However, no one with enough authority had enough vision to plan a
fair means of making domain names available, and so, the best domain names were taken
by those in the know, long before the public even heard of the Internet.
The Great Disappearing Domain Name Act
Funny thing was, the people that grabbed the best Com domain names,
tried to play by some rules, and did not grab the best Net and Org domain names,
because they thought those domain names were not for commercial purposes.
Along came the public, who finding all the best Com domain names missing,
had no scruples, or at least out of rightful desperation and exasperation,
grabbed the best Org and Net domain names, not knowing, or caring,
that those domain names were marked for special purposes.
So, like that, all the single word domain names were gone from the
domain name market place.
Good two word domain names were the next to disappear.
Biz and Info to the Rescue - Not
To relieve the pressure the Internet governing body, released two more
domain name extensions .biz and .info.
To be fair, and give everyone an equal chance at the best new domain names,
they arranged for a lottery.
Good idea, bad execution.
Without going into the details, many of the registrars pulled a dirty trick
and submitted their own domain name holding companies for the best domain names,
rather than submitting requests from the general public.
Many of the best Biz and Info domain names went to them.
Sorry.
However, there were still many next best domain names available.
After a little while, they were gobbled up too.
Why Are All the Domain Names Getting Registered
You might be wondering why all the domain names are getting registered.
Supply and demand.
Good domain names make people money, therefore there is a demand for domain names.
There are a lot more people than there are good domain names.
How many people might be interested in a domain name for say shoes.
Everyone who designs shoes.
Everyone who critiques shoes.
Everyone who manufacturers shoes.
Everyone who retails shoes.
Eveyone who repairs shoes.
Everyone who sells shoe accessories.
Even the guy that sells socks would like to have shoes.com.
Plus there are people whose name might be Mr. Shoes.
Or even an organization like South Hampton Ohio Engravers (SHOEs).
That is a lot of people, but how many shoes dot anything are there.
Only a handful.
Where Did Dot Name Come From
Another idea the Internet governing had, was to use .name
for people to use for their, well, names.
People could register both their first and last names,
as in John.Smith.Name.
Seems like a bad idea to me, there are a lot of John Smiths,
but it seemed like a good idea to them.
Anyway, not many others liked the idea either, and so, few used dot name
as intended.
Since they were not making money off dot name, they decided, what the heck,
and let anybody register anything they wanted to, just like any other TLD.
No lottery, no nothing, just a free for all.
Wow, a lot of good dot names were up for grabs.
I got some.
Took a few months, but they are all gone now too.
Country Code TLDs
We are getting near the end of our story.
Every country has a two-letter TLD for their country.
There are well over a hundred country code TLDs.
The one for the United States is .us.
Most countries have restrictions on who can register their country code.
For most countries you have to live in or have an office in their country.
That makes sense.
France has 70 million people.
They can sell out all their domain names with no problem.
Why should they let an American register Paris.fr.
However, some small countries figured out they can make some money by
selling domain names to the public, especially if they have a cool country code,
like Belize with .bz, which is just like .biz, but shorter, even better.
Savvy people have been jumping on these country code domain names,
where the best domain names were available for about the last year.
Why are these country code domain names so good (so do people).
Search engines love keyword domain names,
and they do not care about TLDs.
To Google, cars.bz is just as good as cars.com.
They are both infinitely better than carsforsale,
or carsusa, or cardeals dot anything.
Plus they are cool. Don't you like the the look of cars.bz.
Feels a little subversive. Not your ordinary dot com.
The best keyword domain names are now almost all gone in all the country codes.
Oh well.
By Andrew Weitzen on June 23, 2007
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